While going through boxes in the basement, I found my baby book. My mother had tucked this piece of paper inside:

I don’t know how old I was, but I had to have been pretty young. (Mom, do you remember?)

If you click to enlarge, you can just barely make out that: 1) I had yet to master the lower-case a; 2) the spelling of the word “cousin” had me completely flummoxed; and 3) my understanding of story structure has come a long way. “Look! Look! A bird nest. We will have to take care of it. If we don’t it will die.” “OK. Let’s go to the store and buy a big Ice-Cream.” “OK. A big big big one!”

So much for the poor little bird. But, I mean, come on! Ice cream!

At the bottom of the page, my mom wrote: “She wrote this story completely by herself. Maybe we have a budding author on our hands.”

My mom did the same for me and I have my first story which is about kittens who are lost and found almost immediately (nothing like a missing narrative arc to show off writing talent at an early age, huh?). I spent a great amount of time thinking of clever names for those kitties though. 🙂

Loved the peek at your handwriting, spelling and punctuation. There is nothing like real evidence of misspellings to remind you that none of us were born super spellers.